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Knife through the stereotypes

ARound about the time I was still doing juvenile court crime – like delinquency, a practice one hopes to grow out of – the fashion was to blame all society's ills on single mothers. As far as the tabloids and government policy ( often indistinguishable, then as now) was concerned, their general fecklessness , indolence and irresponsibility was to blame for everything. Specifically, their pig headed refusal to have truck with the absent heroes who had fathered their children was the root cause of 'Britain's Breakdown'. It was always a surprise to go to court and meet the reality – worried, hard working, committed women trying to keep their families together against the odds. Not all of course – the odorously pissed mama, a stranger to education, employment or indeed soap, who swigged cans of loopy juice while letting rip to her strongly held views about immigration and shouting obscenities at her 11-year-old wasn't a particularly great advert for motherhood, or indeed our species. Her mantra was that Britain was no longer a place for the decent white working class, like her. After an afternoon of this I did mutter 'Well, one out of three ain't bad' but by then she was too drunk to hear it. But I remember her as a glorious exception to the norm – the majority were wilfully misrepresented.

Face-to-face training still favoured above online

Solicitors Journal's training survey highlighted the lack of a systematic approach to training as well as the majority of respondants prefering face-to-face courses

Life in crime

Beware unmeritorious appeals, says Lucy Corrin as she warns that poor legal advice will result in court orders that time served in custody will not count

REACH's impact on personal injury

New requirements under European chemicals legislation will have major implications for safety lawyers, says Victoria Handley

A decade on from reform

The changes to the civil procedure rules following the Woolf report were implemented ten years ago, but have they delivered the intended fairer results at lower costs and speedier justice, asks David Greene

Inferring discrimination from a failure to reply to questionnaires

Tribunals should not automatically draw inferences that an employer's failure to respond to a discrimination questionnaire indicates guilt. David Massarella reports

Update: landlord and tenant

Milton McIntosh reviews the latest cases on service charges, rent reviews, alienation, forfeiture and business teancies

Choosing the best

Do not treat your firm's website like a second-rate flyer, says Russell Conway